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Comment by ZenoArrow | Hacker News Reader

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ZenoArrow

Rhabdo is supposedly so common in CrossFit that they have a mascot called 'Uncle Rhabdo':

https://medium.com/@ericrobertson/crossfits-dirty-little-sec...

'Pukie The Clown' is another:

https://breakingmuscle.com/fitness/why-pukie-the-clown-isn-t...

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Yeah, personally I find it in poor taste on the part of Crossfit to promote icons like Rhabdo the Clown. Granted, it's not official, but official enough for a decent looking cartoon mascot to exist

They're raising awareness on a very serious problem, sure, but doing so by portraying people who get injured in their classes as clowns.

To some degree the instructor is at fault here. After all, the point of Crossfit is to get people into shape through very hard exercise. It's the instructor's job to push people while somehow making sure that they don't push people past an invisible line that exists in different locations for different people.

I'm not saying the instructors are bad or irresponsible people, merely that they have very strange and very hard jobs. Arguably even Crossfit isn't bad, it's merely a symptom of the root cause. We're too busy and too undisciplined to get into shape with a proper diet and sensible exercise spread throughout the day, so we let "professionals" yell us into shape into a short yet intense time window.

And two of the fruits of this insanity are higher numbers of the population disabled by Rhabdo and this strange cartoon clown hooked up to a dialysis machine.

>> I'm not saying the instructors are bad or irresponsible people

Isn't the most common criticism thrown at Crossfit (beside the cult mentality thing) that their training/certification process for their instructors is woefully amateurish compared to other, typically more responsible, programs?

Yes. They also have a reputation for preferring quantity over quality (half-assed pullups) and a generally sloppy approach to safety (yeah sure do squats while balancing on an exercise ball). Check out the deadlift form in the "crossfit games": https://youtu.be/0lr1p7f2P4Y?t=50s

Or how they do "pullups": https://youtu.be/XQvSmqChm6M?t=1m40s

>> "crossfit games"

Wow, that is scary. Considering that these are supposed to be their top performers (and in a promoted event no less), that is quite a different level of bad than just having some instructors that may not be up to snuff. It's like they purposefully and actively promote bad form and health-damaging training. So the opposite of 'fit' then.

Rhabdo is common in class-based programs (CrossFit, spin, etc.) because you get people from various fitness levels all doing the same workout, and nobody is scaling properly due to ignorance or peer pressure to keep up with the best in the class.

Class instructors need to educate their class better on the risks of rhabdo.

Not that I needed another reason not to take up Crossfit, but that's another one added to the list. Thanks for that.

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